Sony NW-A800 gets reviewed

While we wait twiddling our thumbs in the States to get ahold of Sony's new supposed hotness, the NW-A800, French DAP site GenerationMP3 has snagged itself the first review of the player. They seem to have good things to say, but unfortunately they're all in French. From what we gleaned, there's some good stuff going on here, with the 2-inch QVGA screen setting it well apart from the nano, and a good feel to the controls and shape of the player. The battery is apparently much easier to get at than that of the iPod -- though still a bit of a chore to replace. On the software side, Sony's made some big improvements, since they've not only spruced up SonicStage, with transcoding and the like, but also allow you to manage your player completely without it. Sony also has a new RSS app, for subscribing to podcasts, photo streams and videos to place on your player, but GenerationMP3 ran into some trouble areas with it. Battery life isn't quite at the 30 hours Sony was promising, but 22 hours for ATRAC and 5 hours for video ain't too shabby. Of course, codec support is quite commendable for Sony, with AAC, WMA and MP3 (all non-DRM) in addition to the regular ATRAC. The GenerationMP3 folks gave this player a 4/5, we'll be keeping an eye out for a review we can actually comprehend.